| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: If I'd only known you were in town! Why wouldn't you
have told me you were coming? I'd never have kept you waiting."
Thorpe laughed wearily. "I hardly knew I was in town myself.
I only ran up last night. I thought it would amuse me
to have a look round--but things seem as dull as ditchwater."
"Oh no," said Semple, "the autumn is opening verra
well indeed. There are more new companies, and a better
public subscription all round, than for any first
week of October I remember. Westralians appear bad
on the face of things, it's true--but don't believe
all you hear of them. There's more than the suspicion
The Market-Place |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Economist by Xenophon: Isch. Yes, Socrates, indeed it is. But I, on my side, must in turn
admit that as regards that faculty which is common alike to every kind
of conduct (tillage, or politics, the art of managing a house, or of
conducting war), the power, namely, of command[1]--I do subscribe to
your opinion, that on this score one set of people differ largely from
another both in point of wit and judgement. On a ship of war, for
instance,[2] the ship is on the high seas, and the crew must row whole
days together to reach moorings.[3] Now note the difference. Here you
may find a captain[4] able by dint of speech and conduct to whet the
souls of those he leads, and sharpen them to voluntary toils; and
there another so dull of wit and destitute of feeling that it will
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: himself otherwise,'--if, as we must add, his defence was that with which
Plato has provided him. But leaving this question, which does not admit of
a precise solution, we may go on to ask what was the impression which Plato
in the Apology intended to give of the character and conduct of his master
in the last great scene? Did he intend to represent him (1) as employing
sophistries; (2) as designedly irritating the judges? Or are these
sophistries to be regarded as belonging to the age in which he lived and to
his personal character, and this apparent haughtiness as flowing from the
natural elevation of his position?
For example, when he says that it is absurd to suppose that one man is the
corrupter and all the rest of the world the improvers of the youth; or,
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